Author: nick

Older Generation Stands Up to Protect School Children
Check out http://threeriversrisingtide.org/grandparents-rock-to-block-fracking-wells-near-schools-with-rocking-chair-blockade/ for updates and photos!

Middlesex Township, Butler, PA – A group of grandparents and seniors shut down an unconventional natural gas drilling (fracking) site near the Mars Area School District with a “rock to block” rocking chair blockade on Monday, December 21. Rex Energy is currently drilling unconventional horizontal hydraulic fracturing gas wells (“fracking”) on the Geyer well pad. The well pad will contain a controversial cluster of wells located about a half mile away from 3,200 students at the Mars Area School District campus. Gas wells and related infrastructure such as processing plants, compressor stations and pipelines emit harmful air pollution, and have the potential to cause water pollution and safety risks. Children are especially vulnerable to environmental hazards. There is also a real safety risk due to accidental explosions and fires.

The group blocked the entrance to the Geyer well pad site because it is the only recourse left to protect the children of the Mars Area School District, as well as all children put at risk when gas wells and infrastructure are placed nearby schools. This blockade is a stand against the gas industry’s reckless rush to frack in pursuit of profits over the health and safety of the children nearby and against politicians who have persistently failed in their duty to act in the public interest over special interests.

Michael Bagdes-Canning, a Butler County grandparent of three, stated, “Since neither the government officials, Rex and others in the industry, or lease holders will act to defend the health and welfare of our communities, our grandchildren, and future generations, we decided to stand up for them by sitting down (in the rocking chairs).”
Laurel Colonello, a Middlesex Twp. grandparent, stated “It is not ok that this toxic industry has moved into our community. The gas industry and local officials have consistently chosen wealth over the health and safety of our community, especially our children.”
Rex Energy called the Adams and Middlesex township police demanding that the grandparents be arrested and removed. Police refused to arrest anyone because there was no no-trespassing sign at the gate. Rex energy shut down operations for the day, installed a brand new no trespassing sign (but on the side that we were looking at it didn’t say anything) and went home. The rocking chair blockade stayed up a few hours and when it was clear Rex wasn’t coming back the grandparents packed up.

The grannies see “rock to block” as a Holiday gift to all children who will be exposed to the health and safety risks inherent in fracking and who in turn will pass on a tainted land and degraded environment to their own children. The group of rockers believe we are all stewards of the environment; to quote an old Native American saying expresses, We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.

If Rex restarts operations at the Geyer well they can expect to hear from some angry grandparents who are hell-bent on protecting their grandchildren.

Looming ahead in eight months’ time is another Conference of Polluters, or COP (technically, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). The last twenty did zilch to save us from climate catastrophe. Judging by early rough drafts of the Paris COP21 agreement recently leaked, another UN fiasco is inevitable.

The ‘Coalition Climat21’ strategy meeting for Paris was held in Tunis on March 23-24, just before the World Social Forum. I had a momentary sense this could be a breakthrough gathering, if indeed fusions were now ripe to move local versions of ‘Blockadia’ – i.e. hundreds of courageous physical resistances to CO2 and methane emissions sources – towards a genuine global political project. The diverse climate activists present seemed ready for progressive ideology, analysis, strategy, tactics and alliances. Between 150 and 400 people jammed a university auditorium over the course of the two days, mixing French, English and Arabic.

It was far more promising than the last time people gathered for a European COP, in 2009 at Copenhagen, when the naivety of ‘Seal the Deal’ rhetoric from mainstream climate organisations proved debilitating. That was a narrative akin to drawing lemmings towards – and over – a cliff: first up the hill of raised expectations placed on UN negotiators, before crashing down into a despondency void lasting several years. Recall that leaders of the US, Brazil, South Africa, India and China did a backroom deal that sabotaged a binding emissions follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol. In ‘Hopenhagen,’ even phrases like ‘System change not climate change’ were co-opted, as green capital educated by NGO allies agreed that a definition of ‘system’ (e.g. from fossil fuels to nuclear) could be sufficiently malleable to meet their rhetorical needs.

That precedent notwithstanding, the phrase “A climate movement across the movements” used here seemed to justify an urgent unity of diverse climate activists, along with heightened attempts to draw in those who should be using climate in their own specific sectoral work. The two beautiful words ‘Climate Justice’ are on many lips but I suspect the cause of unity may either erase them from the final phraseology or water them down to nebulousness.

Unity – without clarity, responsibility and accountability?

Over the last nine months, since an August gathering in Paris, a great deal of coalition building has occurred in France and indeed across Europe. The proximate goal is to use awareness of the Paris COP21 to generate events around the world in national capitals on both November 28-29th – just before the summit begins – and on December 12, as it climaxes. There was consensus that later events should be more robust than the first, and that momentum should carry this movement into 2016. (The December 2016 COP22 will be in Morocco.

The initial signs here were upbeat. Christophe Aguiton, one of Attac’s founders, opened the event: “In the room are Climate Justice Now! (CJN!), Climate Action Network (CAN), international unions, the faith community, and the newer actors in the global movement, especially 350.org and Avaaz. We have had a massive New York City march and some other inspiring recent experiences in the Basque country and with the Belgium Climate Express.”

But, he went on, there are some serious problems ahead that must be soberly faced:

* there is no CJ movement in most countries;

* grounded local CJ organisations are lacking;

* we need not just resistances but alternatives; and

* there are some important ideological divisions.

Still, he explained, “We won’t talk content because in the same room, there are some who are moderate, some who are radical – so we will stress mobilisation, because we all agree, without mobilisation we won’t save the climate.” For more than 15 years, I’ve known Aguiton as one of the most persuasive, committed radicals in Europe. And in New York last September, I remember the ‘c’ word being used quite freely, partly prompted by the launch of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything. So to me, the tone here suddenly sounded bland.

This unity-seeking-minus-politics was reminiscent of a process four years in South Africa known as ‘C17’, a collection of 17 civil society organisations that did local preparatory work before the UN’s 2011 Durban climate summit, the ‘COP17.’ Actually, fewer than a half-dozen representatives really pitched in throughout, and the big moderate organisations expected to mobilise financial resources, media attention and bodies ultimately did none of these. South Africa’s Big Green groups and trade unions failed to take C17 ownership, to commit resources and to add the institutional muscle needed.

I watched that process fairly closely, and with growing despondency. The first choice for a university counter-summit venue close by the Durban International Convention Centre was found to be unavailable at the last moment, so my Centre at the University of KwaZulu-Natal became an instant host for the ‘People’s Space.’ Thousands came but the messaging was vapid and virtually no impact was made on the COP or on South Africa’s own reactionary emissions policy. The final rally of 10,000 activists midway through the COP17 gave UN elites and local politicians a legitimating platform. Nor did we use the event to build a South African climate justice movement worthy of the name.

So my own assessment of the ‘state failure, market failure and critic failure’ in Durban strongly emphasised the problem of excessive unity, without ideological clarity, institutional responsibility or political accountability.

At COP21, radicals outside and only moderates left standing inside

Maybe it will be different in France, because their movements are mobilising impressively, with projects like November 27-29 mass actions aimed at municipalities; a Brussels-Paris activist train; a ‘run for life’ with 1000 people running 4km each from northern Sweden to Paris; the ‘Alternatiba’ alternatives project with 200 participating villages from the Basque country up to Brussels which will culminate on September 26-27; and getting warmed up, on May 30-31, an anticipated 1000 local climate initiatives around the country.

Yet the local context sounds as difficult in 2015 as it was in South Africa in 2011. As Malika Peyraut from Friends of the Earth-France pointed out, national climate policy is “inconsistent and unambitious” and the country’s politics are increasingly chaotic, what with the rise of the far right to 25% support in municipal elections. Worse, French society will be distracted by regional elections from December 6-12, and with national elections in 2017, “there is a high risk of co-optation,” she warned.

No politicians should have their faces near these mobilisations, suggested Mariana Paoli of Christian Aid (reporting from a working group), as COP21 protesters needed to avoid the celebrity-chasing character of the big New York march. Al Gore’s name came up as one whose own corporate messaging was out of tune. But Avaaz’s Iain Keith asked, “Hypothetically, what if the president of Vanuatu came to the march – should we refuse him?” Vanuatu is probably the first nation that will sink beneath the waves, and the recent Cyclone Pam catastrophe made this a twister question. Without a real answer, Paoli replied: “What we are trying to avoid is politicians capturing the successes of movement mobilisation.”

Behind that excellent principle lies a practical reality: there are no reliable state allies of climate justice at present and indeed there really are no high-profile progressives working within the COPs. It’s a huge problem for UN reformers because it leaves them without a policy jam-maker inside to accompany activist tree-shaking outside. The UN head of the COP process is an oft-compromised carbon trader, Christiana Figueres. Although once there were heroic delegates badgering the COP process, they are all gone now:

* Lumumba Di-Aping led the G77 countries at the Copenhagen COP15 – where in a dramatic accusation aimed at the Global North, he named climate a coming holocaust requiring millions of coffins for Africa – and so was lauded outside and despised inside, but then was redeployed to constructing the new state of South Sudan;

* President Mohamed Nasheed from the Maldives – also a high-profile critic at Copenhagen – was first a victim of US State Department’s cables (revealed by Wikileaks) which documented how his government agreed to a February 2010 $50 million bribe to support the Copenhagen Accord (just as Washington and the EU agreed that the “Alliance of Small Island States countries ‘could be our best allies’ given their need for financing”) and was then couped by rightwingers in 2012 and, earlier this month, was illegitimately jailed for a dozen years;

* Bolivia’s UN Ambassador Pablo Solon was booted from his country’s delegation after the 2010 Cancun COP16, where, solo, he had bravely tried to block the awful deal there, and not even the Latin American governments most hated by Washington – Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua – supported him thanks to Northern bullying;

* in any case a jungle road-building controversy (TIPNIS) soon divided Evo Morales’ supporters, and in 2013 the COP’s progressive leadership void grew wide after the death of Hugo Chavez and the battle by Rafael Correa against green-indigenous-feminist critics for his decision that year to drill for oil in the Yasuni Amazon (after having once proposed an innovative climate debt downpayment to avoid its extraction); and

* Filippino Climate Commissioner Yeb Saño had a dramatic 2013 role in Warsaw condemning COP19 inaction after his hometown was demolished by Super Typhoon Haiyan, but he was evicted by a more conservative environment ministry (apparently under Washington’s thumb) just before the Lima COP in 2014.

If you are serious about climate justice, the message from these COP experiences is unmistakeable: going inside is suicide.

Framing for Failure

It is for this reason that the original protest narrative suggestions that CAN’s Mark Raven proposed here were generally seen as too reformist. Acknowledging the obvious – “People losing faith in the broken system, corporations sabotaging change” and “We need a just transition” – his network then offered these as favoured headline memes: “Showdown in 2015 leads to a vision of just transition to fossil-free world” and “Paris is where the world decides to end fossil fuel age.”

Yet with no real prospects of reform, the more militant activists were dissatisfied. Nnimmo Bassey from Oilwatch International was adamant, “We need not merely a just transition, but an immediate transition: keep the oil in the soil, the coal in the hole, the tar sands in the land and the fracking shale gas under the grass.” That, after all, is what grassroots activists are mobilising for.

Added Nicola Bullard: “This narrative is too optimistic especially in terms of what will surely be seen as a failed COP21.” Bullard was a core Focus on the Global South activist in the 2007 Bali COP13 when Climate Justice Now! was formed based on five principles:

* reduced consumption;

* huge financial transfers from North to South based on historical responsibility and ecological debt for adaptation and mitigation costs paid for by redirecting military budgets, innovative taxes and debt cancellation;

* leaving fossil fuels in the ground and investing in appropriate energy-efficiency and safe, clean and community-led renewable energy;

* rights-based resource conservation that enforces indigenous land rights and promotes peoples’ sovereignty over energy, forests, land and water; and

* sustainable family farming, fishing and peoples’ food sovereignty.

Just as valid today, these principles were further fleshed out at the April 2010 World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia, to include emissions cut targets – 45% below 1990 levels in the advanced capitalist economies by 2020 – plus a climate tribunal and the decommissioning of destructive carbon markets which have proven incapable of fair, rational and non-corrupt trading. Dating to well before the CJN! split from CAN in Bali, that latter fantasy – letting bankers determine the fate of the planet by privatising the air – remains one of the main dividing lines between the two ideologies: climate justice or climate action.

New York as a positive example

A unity project is by no means impossible, and these are extremely talented organisers. The world was left with the impression of vibrant climate mobilisation in far more difficult conditions last September 21, after all. Cindi Weisner from Grassroots Global Justice Alliance reflected on the New York march, reminding of how broad-front building entailed surprising trust emerging between groups – leftists at the base, big unions, Big Green – whose leaders in prior years would not have even greeted each other.

From Avaaz, Keith reminded us of the impressive New York numbers: 400,000 people on the streets including 50,000 students; 1574 organisations involved including 80 unions; another 300,000 people at 2650 events around the world; three tweets/second and 8.8 million FB impressions with 700,000 likes/shares. The next day’s Flood Wall Street action was surely the most dynamic moment, what with the financial core of fossil capitalism under the spotlight of several thousand protesters.

But with corporate and UN summits following the big New York march and without escalation afterwards, the elites’ spin was dominant and ridiculously misleading. Barack Obama told the heads of state who gathered two days later: “Our citizens keep marching. We have to answer the call.” Needless to say the UN summit’s answer was null and void from the standpoint of respecting a minimal scientific insistence on emissions cuts.

The necessity of a radical narrative

Since the same will occur in Paris, concrete actions against the emitters themselves were suggested, including more projects like the Dutch ‘Climate Games’ which saw a coal line and port supply chain disrupted last year. There are coming protests over coal in Germany’s Rhineland and we will likely see direct actions at Paris events such as Solution 21, a corporate ‘false solutions’ event where geoengineering, Carbon Capture and Storage, and carbon trading will be promoted.

Likewise, ActionAid’s Teresa Anderson reported back from a Narrative Working Group on lessons from Copenhagen: “Don’t tell a lie that Paris will fix the climate. People were arrested in Copenhagen for this lie. No unrealistic expectations – but we need to give people hope that there is a purpose to the mobilisation.”

Most important, she reminded, “There is Global North historical responsibility, and those who are most vulnerable have done the least to cause the problem.” This is vital because in Durban, UN delegates began the process of ending the “common but differentiated responsibility” clause. As a result, finding ways to ensure climate “loss & damage” invoices are both issued and paid is more difficult. The UN’s Green Climate Fund is a decisive write-off in that respect, with nowhere near the $100 billion annually promised for 2020 and beyond by then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Most important, said Anderson, given the tendency of Third World nationalists to posture on this point, “Elites in both North and South are to blame, so it’s not a matter of pure geographical injustice. It’s the economic system that is driving climate change.” Looking at more optimistic messaging, she concluded the report-back: “Powerful positive actions are in play. We are life – fossil fuels are death. Paris is a moment to build movements, to show we are powerful and will fight into 2016 and beyond to solve the climate crisis. It takes roots to weather the storm ahead.”

Responding, said former Bolivian negotiator Solon (now Bangkok-based director of Focus on the Global South), “I think we need a clearer narrative: let’s stop an agreement that’s going to burn the climate. We already know that agreement exists. If China peaks emissions only by 2030 or if we accept Obama’s offer to China, we all burn. The Paris agreement will be worse than the draft we’ve seen. The point is not to put pressure for something better. It’s to stop a bad deal. We are against carbon markets, geoengineering and the emissions targets.”

But the clearest message came from veteran strategist Pat Mooney of the research network called the etc group, describing to the mass meeting what he wanted to see in Paris: “It should start like New York and end like Seattle. Shut the thing down.”

Back in 2009, just weeks before he died, this was what Dennis Brutus – the mentor of so many South African and international progressives – also advised: “Seattle Copenhagen!” The Paris Conference of Polluters also needs that kind of shock doctrine, so that from an activist cyclone a much clearer path can emerge towards climate justice in the months and years ahead.

Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society in Durban.

Ten climate activists have been found “not guilty” of criminal charges stemming from the Flood Wall Street protest. New York City Criminal Court Judge Robert Mandelbaum ruled that the NYPD’s order to disperse violated the First Amendment.

Following the historic September 21 People’s Climate March, several thousand people took to the street in the Financial District to identify and protest against Wall Street’s central role in fueling climate destruction. At the end of the day, 102 people were arrested for sitting in the street at the intersection of Broadway and Wall. Ten of the arrestees subsequently decided to fight their charges in court.

In his ruling, Judge Robert Mandelbaum found that the NYPD’s order to disperse was unlawful, and that by ordering protesters to leave the entire Wall Street area, police violated protesters’ First Amendment right to carry their message directly to its intended recipients: the Wall Street bankers who bankroll climate change.

Defense Attorney Jonathan Wallace successfully argued that the Constitution protects citizen’s rights to express political speech within proximity to the target of the protest. In this case, the NYPD first prevented protesters from entering Wall Street before later ordering them to leave the area altogether. This pattern of policing proved to be the Prosecution’s undoing.

Judge Mandelbaum also broke new ground by taking judicial notice that climate change is happening, is a serious problem, requires immediate action, and is caused by human activity.

“The importance of judicial notice is that the judge accepted climate change and the need to do something about it as a fact without the necessity of any evidentiary support or proof at trial,” said Defense Attorney Martin Stolar. “To the best of my knowledge, this is unprecedented and has significance for future litigation involving climate change.”

Today’s ruling vindicates Flood Wall Street’s political message and sets an important legal precedent for asserting the constitutional legitimacy of mass civil disobedience actions protesting climate change. All ten defendants gave passionate testimony to the court, stating their convictions for attending the Flood Wall Street protest and affirming that their actions were justified.

“I was proud to be arrested standing up for what was right, and it was good for the community, the environment, and the planet ,” said Lewis Chiu, a 39-year old data analyst who was arrested at the sit-in.

“Of major significance is the fact that during the trial the judge took ‘judicial notice’ that climate change is a serious problem in need of being addressed in an urgent manner,” said Susan Heitker, one of the defendants.

Jeneen Roybal, a disabled U.S. Army veteran who was one of the defendants said: “This is an important precedent, not only for climate change demonstrators, but everyone who engages in protest activity.”

“Wall Street companies fund and profit off disaster for all us, and finance capitalism won’t be able to deal with the social fallout of climate change. We urgently need to act to save our planet and futures,” said Jason Woltjen, one of the defendants.

By WILSON DIZARD

(Article Cross Posted from Al Jazeera America)

Residents of a West Virginia county started picking up the pieces Tuesday after an oil tanker train derailment and fire forced more than a hundred people from their homes and threatened water supplies for thousands,raising new alarm among environmental activists over the rail transport of crude oil through their state.

By Tuesday evening, power crews were restoring electricity, water treatment plants were going back online, and most of the local residents were back home. Many people had taken shelter in local schools or hotels near the town of Boomer. Others continued to rely on free bottled water from the water utility. CSX, the rail company involved, issued a statement saying it is working with the Red Cross to provide shelter for some 125 people amid frigid temperatures and a fresh foot of snow.

With fears of oil seeping into the adjacent Kanawha River, water authorities shut off an intake plant near the derailment, disrupting the lives of everyone on the water system near the smoky crash site. After testing on Tuesday found no detectable trace of oil in the river, public health officials and the utility, West Virginia American Water (WVAW), started turning the intake plant back on — but it will be several days before water service returns to normal.

The crash sent one person to a hospital with breathing trouble, but the blaze resulted in no deaths despite sending a massive fireball over the Kanawha River at about 1:30 p.m. EST, around 30 miles southeast of the state capital, Charleston.

At least 20 tankers were “involved” in fires, CSX said Tuesday, and state environmental officials and the rail company decided to let the fires burn themselves out. “At this point there are still small fires burning, so responders can’t go down to there,” said Kelley Gillenwater, a spokeswoman for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). “We can’t get to the actual derailment to assess the immediate impact.”

Gillenwater said the DEP remains dedicated to preventing the pollution of water supplies, pointing to its proposal for strong chemical storage safety laws. Her department, however, has nothing to do with overseeing what travels through the state via rail, she said.

According to CSX, the 109-car train was carrying Bakken shale crude oil from North Dakota to Yorktown, Virginia.

“We don’t have the jurisdiction to regulate that transportation,” Gillenwater said, adding that the DEP will be conducting further tests of the river’s water and watching out for a telltale “sheen” of oil.

Gillenwater wasn’t certain of who is responsible for environmental safety on the state’s railroads, but pointed to the Department of Transportation as the likely authority. The West Virginia DOT web site says it controls the State Rail Authority, which oversees freight rail. The DOT was not available for comment Tuesday night.

After the fire burns out, DEP officials will examine how much oil has spilled onto the soil and remove contaminated dirt that could pollute groundwater, Gillenwater said.

West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Montgomery, the site of the water plant shutoff yesterday, canceled classes until Monday, Feb. 23. Students living on campus will be able to stay at the nearby Beckley branch of WVU, the school said Tuesday, adding that it doesn’t expect to regain water service at its Montgomery campus for another 72 hours.

WVAW and the DEP said tests Tuesday showed no detectable levels of oil in the water near intake valves downstream from the spill. But the company had already shut off the system Monday as a precaution. The WVAW has advised residents to boil their water before drinking it after the taps are turned back on. The water restrictions affect about 2,000 people in six different towns, local news channel WVNS reports.

The accident conjures memories of another spill in West Virginia just over a year ago, when 10,000 gallons of a coal processing chemical spilled from a tank along the Elk River, making its way to the waterway — the supply for 300,000 people in and around Charleston. For weeks, emergency management authorities in the state distributed free water to thousands across the region.

Even now, many people in that area report being afraid to drink the water.

“It’s just one thing after another,” said Maria Gunnoe, an environmental activist with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, who cited the Jan. 2014 chemical spill as an example.

Accidents with coal or gas are so common, Gunnoe said, that people don’t notice them much anymore. She blamed what she sees as a complacent and complicit state legislature.

“Everyone will forget this in three months, and our state leaders will continue to facilitate the oil and gas industry and not protect the people,” Gunnoe said.

“I don’t have all the answers. It’s a massive problem,” she added, saying the freight shipments of oil aren’t handled safely. “They go extremely fast and they’re extremely reckless, and all of our state leaders turn a blind eye until something like this happens.”

T. Paige, 66, a musician, photographer and part-time environmental activist who lives near Monday’s derailment, said Tuesday morning that he could still see smoke coming from the accident site. He said the crash made him feel “very, very, very angry.”

“These trains are not regulated enough,” he said. “They should not have been going through here in the snow storm. It’s dangerous. They’re not taking adequate precautions.”

He blamed what he called a close relationship between industry and elected leaders for what he sees as a dangerous attitude toward regulation.